The Beauty And The Tragedy
by The Brat Prince
Summary: “Kenny,” he says, and he says it in a way that nobody else says my name. Like I’m a person, not a Sex God, not a Poor Boy, not a Waste of Life. Slash, K Squared.
1. Watch Your Step, Love Is Broken

**The Beauty and the Tragedy**

_Chapter One_

By: Jondy Macmillan

Disclaimer: Don't own it.

A/N: Pure Kenny/Kyle. No love triangles. Multi-chaptered. Slash (if you hadn't guessed).

* * *

Rain never hits South Park. It's always snow, slush, or hail. Occasionally, it's the rare sunny day. Never rain.

I stare out my window in amazement, watching water pound the pavement. It's washing away all the grime that's accumulated on the outside of the glass pane; years and years of dirt that good old mom and dad could never be bothered to clean. It's not their fault. Cleaning supplies cost money, and we don't have any.

I trace the path of raindrops with my finger, even though they fall too quickly for me to follow. My house is dark, cold, damp. My parents walked out over a week ago, leaving for god knows where. I'm not worried they'll come back; they always come back. Even if they don't, I can take care of myself. That's what they taught me when they couldn't put food in my mouth. Fight. Breathe. Live. Do anything it takes to survive. They're good parents.

All that them being gone means is no TV and no raiding the fridge. The electric bill is past due, sitting on the counter under a pile of other mail. Eviction notices that read Get Out Now and unpaid legal fees for my older brother who got himself in the slammer again.

My room's got this stench, something about being poor. About garbage and sloth and too much sex. It reeks like a strip club, like a brothel, like home. I roll over on my threadbare mattress, avoiding the spring that always pokes me in the side. I've got the scars to prove it. Battles with my bed, thrashing in the middle of the night, caught in the grips of a nightmare and then sproing!

Right in the back, like a lover with a knife.

On a normal night, a night without rain, I'd ride out the hours drinking dad's stash of Natty Ice and staring at Kevin's porn mags. But there's rain, and the beer is hot and flat, and the lights are out so that I can't see the girls spreading their legs for me. Inviting me. Letting me pretend for a second that I'm worthy.

I listen to the rain, the rhythmic rat a tat tat that keeps getting louder and louder. Rapping like a knock, like someone's pounding on my door, but nobody would do that. No one even knows I exist. I'm drifting into space, into sleep, into nothingness. The knocking, dancing raindrops sound off, exploding in my head like stars.

There's a muffled voice, like someone's talking, screaming, yelling.

I climb off my bed, thinking that maybe mom and dad came home and forgot the keys. That's silly; we don't have a lock on our door. Maybe they're just too drunk to work the knob.

When the door swings back, I wish it hadn't. It's my fence against the world, my fence against the boy standing on my porch, soaked to the bone.

He's waiting on the hole-filled welcome mat, dripping gallons. His red curls hang in his face, obscuring those eyes I know so well from view. I watch his lips move, "Can I come in?"

It sounds so far away.

I want to slam the door in his face; scream no. Scream for him to leave.

My voice has abandoned me. There's a chunk of ill stuck deep in my throat. Instead I nod. He can come in. He can hurt me, again, and again, and again.

He sits down on my couch, wet as wet, gorgeous as gorgeous. Gorgeous as no guy should conceivably be.

I offer him a beer. He pops the top of the can with a flick of his fingers. The aluminum tab flied across the room, into the pile of overflowing garbage we've designated the trash heap. He chugs down half of it, and I watch the way his Adam's apple moves, slow and hypnotic.

You learn when you're poor that life's not fair. You want things, and you barely ever get them. People say you have options. There are no options. There's living with what life's dealt you. I can't get a job. No one who knows my dad's reputation will hire me, his son, and everyone in town knows Stuart McCormick. He's a local legend, a warning tale of How Not To Be.

The only thing that's free in life is warm bodies to sleep beside, and even them you have to work for. Girls are easy. You wink and you flirt and you say their hair looks nice. That's all girls want. Soon enough they're gasping for breath like fish out of water, and their thighs like silk are rubbing up against your thighs. Easy peasy.

Boys are easy too. The marked ones have a look in their eye. A world-wariness when they think you might persecute them for wanting to get creative in the God-made order of Who To Fuck. A Ready Set Go expression when they realize you might maybe possibly be just like them.

He isn't easy. He's the kind of guy who likes girls. He compliments their hair because he really thinks it looks nice, shiny, not greasy and wild like that skinny ass blond whore in the ghetto. That skinny ass blond whore who just happens to be me.

I'm not usually down on myself. I'm the life of the party. I'm the one who's been there, done that, and is back for more. I know how to dance, I know how to drink, and I know how to make love like I invented it. That's what they say around school. That's what they whisper when I pass. They don't talk about me being poor anymore; they don't have to. Everyone knows. There's a giant brand on my back, one I can't touch or erase.

But I'm okay with it.

It's his fault. He's the one who makes me want to break rank. He's the one who makes me want to be better than What I Am. I watch him finish off the rest of the beer in a few easy gulps, and I despise him for being golden. Rain drenched and smothered in darkness, he still looks better than anything else I've ever seen. He's got The Best Friend, he's got The Rich Parents, and he's got The Perfect Sibling. Sometimes he even has The Requisite Hot Girlfriend. He dumped the last one a few weeks ago. No one knows why. I suspect it has to do with her shrill, eardrum bursting voice.

"Kenny," he says, and he says it in a way that nobody else says my name. Like I'm a person, not a Sex God, not a Poor Boy, not a Waste of Life.

"Yeah," I choke out, because there's still sickness in my throat, a lump of coal from Santa for being a Bad, Bad Boy.

"Can I stay here for a while?" he asks, his eyes dark and the rain pitter pattering on my roof, leaking onto the bucket I should have set up so the floors don't warp but is instead lying on its side near the couch, housing a stray cat and a rat and god knows how many spiders.

My voice is a traitor, and I nod once more.

* * *

A/N: Please review, and maybe I'll update sooner rather than later.


	2. I Am Every Tear You Cry

**The Beauty And The Tragedy**

_Chapter Two_

By: Jondy Macmillan

A/N: Hi, remember this fic? Its baaaack. And okay, maybe I don't initially remember where it was going, but I've come up with a suitable (I think) compromise. Thank you guys all loads for the alerts/faves/reviews!

* * *

He won't leave. The rain won't leave and he won't leave, and the mantra of it throbs in my ears.

It's not his fault; he can't just exit stage right. He has nowhere to go. His parents are out of town for the week, and he was supposed to stay with his Super Best Everything, the one person he can Always Depend On, but apparently 'always' is just another moniker for 'only when the girlfriend doesn't have the house to herself'. Stan Marsh is one of those guys who's being primed to be a Good Old Boy, and part of being a GOB is never turning down sex when it's offered.

Sucks for Kyle.

Sucks even more for me.

Three days I've put up with having a demi-god in my house, because there's nothing else I can do. I can't turn him away, not when I'm supposed to be a friend.

Except between the pitter patter of the rain and the smell of his department store cologne, I'm feeling less than friendly. I think I'm somewhere more between homicidal and horny.

I guess I have to explain the horny comment.

This one time, at some party that had too much alcohol and not enough excitement, Kyle and I hooked up. Hooking up seems like an understated description of what we did, of the way it felt, of the way I felt. There was fluid and passion and heat, and I've never been so hot in my life. I've never been able to touch a person and feel them radiate through me, visceral and fierce. Never, until Kyle.

I might be blowing it out of proportion. It wasn't a religious experience, not even close.

But it was probably as close as I'll ever get.

Ever since then, I haven't been able to look him in the eye without popping a boner, which is fine at school, when there are cafeteria-loads full of girls with curves and lips and the promise of dripping wet sex.

Close quarters is a different story.

It doesn't help that I know what happened means nothing to him. That he's straight, and I'm some skinny ass boy from the ghetto, and that he was so drunk he probably doesn't even remember.

But I remember. Kyle's this iridescent creature, impossible to forget. Even now, I can feel his radiance, as he flits by me in the hallway, on his way to the bathroom with a wink and a smile.

I want to cut him open to see what's inside, to understand him. Because that's how we, as humans, understand things. We splay them wide, examine their insides, and even then, even when we've laid some things bare, left them with only shame and humiliation and intestines exposed to air, we never really understand.

We never understand how a single person can break us into pieces just by breathing.

"Dude, I'm going to take a shower. Do you think the hot water's back on yet?"

"No," I incline my head to the side, knowing full well that mom and dad haven't fixed the boiler yet. Hell, we're lucky we have water at all right now, "Try not to scream like a little girl this time, okay?"

"Hey," Kyle chuckles good naturedly, "That was once. I was _surprised_."

I give him an eye roll and a 'sure, man', friendly gestures that mean nothing at all. What I want to say, what I would say jokingly to anyone else hangs on my lips, burns the tip of my tongue. It would be so easy to ask if he wants me to join him for body warmth. So easy to break our friendship into a million tiny shards.

Instead I pour over the newspaper, four weeks old and scrounged from beneath my parents' bed. There's an article about old lovers, finally reunited a bajillion years after World War II tore them apart. The paper hails it as a classic romance, as a tale people will remember for decades to come.

Sometimes I read this shit and I wonder, what makes a great love story? People aren't going to remember this couple, these two people who overcame adversity but survived.

No, we only remember the ones who meet their tragic ends, the great couples who _don't _make it. Romeo and Juliet. Bonnie and Clyde. It's the same story all over the world with different characters.

So there, maybe Kyle and I are some big, tragic, romantic couple, because fuck if there's any way we'll ever make it. We'd have to be _something_ in the first place to even consider making it. But he's just the guy in the shower, and I'm just a boy on a couch with some antiquated newspaper who just compared his unrequited hard on to some geriatric lovers. Talk about begrudging other people their happiness.

I lean my head against the couch, the itch and the scratch of the worn material rubbing against my cheek. I listen to the steady beat of the rain, of the drum of the shower running a room away, the creaks and moans of my house surrendering, rotting away beneath the falling sky. I think about Kyle; the arch of his neck and the slant of his collarbone and the way his mouth felt over mine.

Sex is ridiculous. I've had it, too many times; good and bad, it all comes with the territory of being worshipped by teenage girls. Little or no self esteem and only too willing to spread their legs.

I've been obsessed with the erotic side of being human since I was practically a baby and my big brother showed me my first porno rag. It was only natural I'd take advantage of it the first chance I got. Now I have a reputation at school, and I've been known to keep up appearances.

The worst part is, if you ask me to recall a single detail of most of those girls, I can't tell you a thing. I can't remember the scent of their perfume or the glint of their jewelry or the slender hollow of their wrists. All those times I went to bed with some enthusiastic partner, and now they just blend into one nameless, faceless girl. Sometimes a blonde, sometimes a redhead. Sometimes nothing but shadows, poor recollections to fatten my dick and visit my more kinky dreams.

Then I have a one off with Kyle fucking Broflovski, and it's seared across my brain matter in a neon-like glow.

Go figure.

I guess the thing about sex is, it doesn't matter.

Until it does.

Sometime while I was getting all deep and meditative about my history, littered with shreds and pieces of lovers half-forgotten, the spigot in the other room stopped running. I strain my ears, alert. For a moment there's just the rain and the house and the rhythm of my breath.

Then footsteps.

I hold my breath, wondering if I'm still enough, if I'm statuesque and silent, will I disappear? Will Kyle walk by me with nary a glance, like I've dissolved into the night?

"Dude, what the fuck are you doing? You look ridiculous."

I let all the air whoosh out of my mouth and throw him a cocky smile, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all."

His eyes bore into me, bringing flashes of the night I can't forget and I feel sudden doubt that I'll ever make it of my house with my heart intact.

It's terrible and daunting and paralyzing, and all I can do is stare right back.

* * *

A/N: Alright, did I mention that I completely forgot where I was going with this? I recall vaguely that it was supposed to be a five part fic, and that's about all. So I set into this chapter planning to just make it really long and end this; have it just be a two parter. Then about three quarters of the way through this existing chapter, I had an epiphany- this will now officially be around four parts, and not half assed like it was going to be. Yay –dies-! Hopefully my next update will be sooooon. Please review and tell me if you'd like that.


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